The law restructuring public Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) to ease restrictions on foreign-language broadcasts needs presidential approval to take effect.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged in March that TRT would launch a special channel to broadcast in Kurdish as well as Farsi and Arabic in Turkey's southeast, which borders Iran and Iraq.

Seeking to boost Turkey's bid to join the European Union, TRT launched 30-minute weekly broadcasts in Kurdish in 2004, breaking a taboo in this country where public use of the language was banned less than 15 years ago.

The programmes, however, have been criticised for poor quality and content.

Private local television and radio stations have also been allowed to air Kurdish-language programmes.

In hopes of eroding any popular support for Kurdish rebels fighting the government, Erdogan's government is under pressure to pair military measures against the separatists with political and economic gestures to the sizeable Kurdish community.

The government has said it will spend up to 15 billion dollars over five years in infrastructure projects and economic incentives in the southeast, Turkey's poorest and least developed region.

The southeast has been the scene of bloody unrest since the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms for self-rule in the region in 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.